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Apache Kafka VS Pulsar

Compare Apache Kafka VS Pulsar and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Apache Kafka logo Apache Kafka

Apache Kafka is an open-source message broker project developed by the Apache Software Foundation written in Scala.

Pulsar logo Pulsar

Audience intelligence and insights platform + research consultancy
  • Apache Kafka Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-01
  • Pulsar Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-29

Pulsar is an audience intelligence and insights platform + research consultancy.

It is used by brands and agencies to understand their audiences and personalize their marketing.

It offers 3 Saas products: - TRAC: social listening tool - TRENDS: Google Analytics for social media trends - CORE: web and social analytics

as well as bespoke research services.

Apache Kafka features and specs

  • High Throughput
    Kafka is capable of handling thousands of messages per second due to its distributed architecture, making it suitable for applications that require high throughput.
  • Scalability
    Kafka can easily scale horizontally by adding more brokers to a cluster, making it highly scalable to serve increased loads.
  • Fault Tolerance
    Kafka has built-in replication, ensuring that data is replicated across multiple brokers, providing fault tolerance and high availability.
  • Durability
    Kafka ensures data durability by writing data to disk, which can be replicated to other nodes, ensuring data is not lost even if a broker fails.
  • Real-time Processing
    Kafka supports real-time data streaming, enabling applications to process and react to data as it arrives.
  • Decoupling of Systems
    Kafka acts as a buffer and decouples the production and consumption of messages, allowing independent scaling and management of producers and consumers.
  • Wide Ecosystem
    The Kafka ecosystem includes various tools and connectors such as Kafka Streams, Kafka Connect, and KSQL, which enrich the functionality of Kafka.
  • Strong Community Support
    Kafka has strong community support and extensive documentation, making it easier for developers to find help and resources.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Kafka

  • Complex Setup and Management
    Kafka's distributed nature can make initial setup and ongoing management complex, requiring expert knowledge and significant administrative effort.
  • Operational Overhead
    Running Kafka clusters involves additional operational overhead, including hardware provisioning, monitoring, tuning, and scaling.
  • Latency Sensitivity
    Despite its high throughput, Kafka may experience increased latency in certain scenarios, especially when configured for high durability and consistency.
  • Learning Curve
    The concepts and architecture of Kafka can be difficult for new users to grasp, leading to a steep learning curve.
  • Hardware Intensive
    Kafka's performance characteristics often require dedicated and powerful hardware, which can be costly to procure and maintain.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing Kafka's dependencies and ensuring compatibility between versions of Kafka, Zookeeper, and other ecosystem tools can be challenging.
  • Limited Support for Small Messages
    Kafka is optimized for large throughput and can be inefficient for applications that require handling a lot of small messages, where overhead can become significant.
  • Operational Complexity for Small Teams
    Smaller teams might find the operational complexity and maintenance burden of Kafka difficult to manage without a dedicated operations or DevOps team.

Pulsar features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Apache Kafka videos

Apache Kafka Tutorial | What is Apache Kafka? | Kafka Tutorial for Beginners | Edureka

More videos:

  • Review - Apache Kafka - Getting Started - Kafka Multi-node Cluster - Review Properties
  • Review - 4. Apache Kafka Fundamentals | Confluent Fundamentals for Apache Kafka®
  • Review - Apache Kafka in 6 minutes
  • Review - Apache Kafka Explained (Comprehensive Overview)
  • Review - 2. Motivations and Customer Use Cases | Apache Kafka Fundamentals

Pulsar videos

2019 Bajaj Pulsar 150 Review | Hindi | MotorOctane

More videos:

  • Review - Nissan Pulsar in-depth review - Carbuyer
  • Review - Bajaj Pulsar RS 200 BS6 Review - We Want Updates !!!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Apache Kafka and Pulsar)
Stream Processing
100 100%
0% 0
Research Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Data Integration
100 100%
0% 0
Market Research
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Apache Kafka and Pulsar

Apache Kafka Reviews

Best ETL Tools: A Curated List
Debezium is an open-source Change Data Capture (CDC) tool that originated from RedHat. It leverages Apache Kafka and Kafka Connect to enable real-time data replication from databases. Debezium was partly inspired by Martin Kleppmann’s "Turning the Database Inside Out" concept, which emphasized the power of the CDC for modern data pipelines.
Source: estuary.dev
Best message queue for cloud-native apps
If you take the time to sort out the history of message queues, you will find a very interesting phenomenon. Most of the currently popular message queues were born around 2010. For example, Apache Kafka was born at LinkedIn in 2010, Derek Collison developed Nats in 2010, and Apache Pulsar was born at Yahoo in 2012. What is the reason for this?
Source: docs.vanus.ai
Are Free, Open-Source Message Queues Right For You?
Apache Kafka is a highly scalable and robust messaging queue system designed by LinkedIn and donated to the Apache Software Foundation. It's ideal for real-time data streaming and processing, providing high throughput for publishing and subscribing to records or messages. Kafka is typically used in scenarios that require real-time analytics and monitoring, IoT applications,...
Source: blog.iron.io
10 Best Open Source ETL Tools for Data Integration
It is difficult to anticipate the exact demand for open-source tools in 2023 because it depends on various factors and emerging trends. However, open-source solutions such as Kubernetes for container orchestration, TensorFlow for machine learning, Apache Kafka for real-time data streaming, and Prometheus for monitoring and observability are expected to grow in prominence in...
Source: testsigma.com
11 Best FREE Open-Source ETL Tools in 2024
Apache Kafka is an Open-Source Data Streaming Tool written in Scala and Java. It publishes and subscribes to a stream of records in a fault-tolerant manner and provides a unified, high-throughput, and low-latency platform to manage data.
Source: hevodata.com

Pulsar Reviews

12 BEST Android Music Player In 2023 [Android MP3 Players]
Answer: Pulsar and Musicolet offer free, ad-free android music players. Otherwise, you need to opt for the paid versions for most of the other apps, if you want to listen to music without commercials.
10 best music players for Android Auto
Pulsar is another solid option for local media playback. The app is nothing too special. However, it has a simple UI, decent controls, and it just plays your music. Some of the features (aside from Android Auto support) include Chromecast support, an equalizer, ReplayGain, gapless playback, playback speed controls, and a home screen widget. There isn’t really much wrong with...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Kafka seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 144 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Apache Kafka mentions (144)

View more

Pulsar mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Pulsar yet. Tracking of Pulsar recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Apache Kafka and Pulsar, you can also consider the following products

RabbitMQ - RabbitMQ is an open source message broker software.

SproutSocial - Sprout Social is a social media management tool created to help businesses find new customers & grow their social media presence. Try it for free.

StatCounter - StatCounter is a simple but powerful real-time web analytics service that helps you track, analyse and understand your visitors so you can make good decisions to become more successful online.

Hootsuite - Enhance your social media management with Hootsuite, the leading social media dashboard. Manage multiple networks and profiles and measure your campaign results.

Histats - Start tracking your visitors in 1 minute!

GWI - GWI is an audience-targeting company loved by some of the world’s influential brands and agencies worldwide to find out what’s happening in the consumer universe.